Written by Mike Reid for FEE.org. Recently, three children from a little-known forest tribe in India approached a nearby Indian village and asked to join their school. The teachers, however, were forbidden by law from admitting the kids. This is because the Indian government prohibits regular folk from interacting with those children, or any members…
Category: Free Markets
The Challenge of Undesigned and Anonymous Order
Written by Steve Horwitz for FFF.org. The spontaneous order of the market has long been an object of both theoretical and aesthetic contemplation for libertarians. From Adam Smith’s discussion of the number of hands it took to make a wool coat, to Leonard Read’s justly famous “I, Pencil,” to the examples that fill Russ Roberts’s…
Entrepreneurs Are the Good Guys
Written by Jeffrey Tucker for LFB.org. Why is business so often scapegoated for all the problems of society? The term scapegoat comes from the Bible and refers to the goat cast out of the community as part of a purification ritual. Perhaps when people saw that lonely goat walk away and probably into its death,…
Socialism is Incompatible With Liberty
Written by Derek H. for Simple Facts and Plain Arguments. Opponents of free markets claim that the economy needs to be “directed” or “managed,” usually toward some kind of vague social goal or “common good.” In other words, we sacrifice some economic liberty for personal liberty. However, this belief in socialism – and I’m defining…
Market Theory Made Easy
Written by Neodoxy for The Voluntaryist Reader. This is an attempt to provide a simple, but extensive introduction to economics and market theory for anyone who is new to the subject or who is trying to better understand the Austrian approach to economics. I also hope that it will prove useful for anyone who could…
The Economics of World Government
Lecture by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, as published at LewRockwell.com. At the beginning, I want to repeat a few points that I have made in my previous lecture on law and economics, and then I want to get to an entirely different subject than the one that I dealt with in that previous lecture. Because there is…
A Fundamental Flaw of Central Planning
Written by Rollo McFloogle for Inside McFloogle’s Mind. As you progress deeper in thought about free markets and the state and the moral consequences of both, you begin to see some of the intricacies of how they work. Prior to this, you were able to see in more and more ways that the state cannot…
Who Benefits From the Fed?
Written by David Howden for Mises.org. We recently looked at the Federal Reserve’s 2012 results. In particular, we pointed to some positive and negative developments. On a positive note, the Fed managed to shrink down the size of its balance sheet by approximately one-third of a percent. (Hey, it’s a start.) On a negative note,…
Don’t Rely on a Quack Doctor
Written by Robert Higgs for Independent.org. A man goes to his doctor for a routine checkup. The doctor performs a perfunctory examination and informs him that unless he receives an experimental treatment the doctor has devised, he will soon become disabled. “What’s it cost, Doc?” the man asks. “Well, unfortunately it’s not cheap, Mr. Smith,…
Economic Fascism and the Power Elite
Written by David S. D’Amato for Mises.org. The state—the organization of the political means—is the institution that allows an idle, unproductive class of parasites to live at the expense of ordinary, working people, whose means are industrious activity and consensual exchange in the marketplace. We ought not assume, however, that the indigent segment of society,…